Progress going backwards.

When supermarkets first appeared on the high streets they were hailed as your 'One Shop Stop' for everything that you needed for your weeks shopping, no more traipsing around different shops to get what you needed. I can't recall if they sold fresh meat, but they stocked far more products than the local grocery store. Over the years they took on the independent green grocer, the wet fish shop and your friendly butcher who not only knew what you wanted but always had a few off cuts for your cats or bones for the dog. A few years on and they became mega shops, everyone undercutting their competitors and squeezing the farmer so they could keep prices low, and the standard went down. Going back to the early 60's I could get everything I needed from four shops, the advent of supermarkets cut that down to just two shops, the butcher and the supermarket. Fast forward fifty years and I now need to go to seven different outlets to get a weeks shopping and four of those are supermarkets, two of which are 30k away. Is this progress? not in my book, of course if we were happy to buy poor quality mass produced food we could do all our shopping in one supermarket, but we're not. The two supermarkets that we have to travel a distance to are three monthly visits, one of them for Organic butter, the other a German supermarket for good quality organic milk, and while we are there we stock up on good bread from the best baker for miles. Fortunately all these things freeze very well, for good fish we travel 50k, again stocking up for three months. It would be great if we could get everything that we need locally, but that would  mean turning the clock back fifty years.

Victoria plum in flower.

Thankfully we grow all our own veg and fruit, can't get more local than that. We currently have carrots, PSB. cabbage, spinach, we are on the last of our leeks and parsnips, but they lasted well.

The garden is looking it's best now with so many different types of daffodils and tulips in flower.

In the woodlands the first bluebells are flowering

along with wood anemones

primroses and celandines, it is lovely to see so much colour, I have heard the first cuckoo of the year, soon the swallows will be with us and summer will be here.

    

Four seasons in a day.

A spring bouquet.

Normally you would have to go traveling to experience four seasons in a day, but not this year, most days of last week  gave us a variety of seasons. From warm, at times quite hot, t-shirt type weather to hail or even snow showers an hour or so later, plus some rain thrown in for good measure, no wonder the garden doesn't know what the season is. Asparagus has given us a couple of spears then frost stopped growth and we had to recover the plants with crop cover.

Strawberries in bloom in the tunnel for the past two months, and only now have we ripening fruit, a month later than we would normally have our first pickings,

but the broad beans are looking good and also the early tunnel potatoes.

 The Camellias which should have flowered February/March are only now flowering. We just hope that the weather becomes a little more stable so the plants can get on with growing.

The daffodil season has been very extended this year, we had the first ones out on the 24th January and we still have some just in bud,

this might be partly due to so many different varieties that we have growing,

well over twenty different ones, a lot of them are perfumed.

I love these daffs, called Twinkling Yellow, the blooms are only the size of my thumb nail.

They have been spectacular this year.

Not too much slug damage to the leaves.

The other plants that have done very well are the Trout lilies, they have multiplied from last year which is fine, I just love them.

The weeds on the pathway are parley.

Things are coming on well in the tunnel including the weeds,

I now count parsley as a weed as it has self-seeded and the pathways are covered with seedlings.

The peach tree has a reasonable amount of fruit set on it, but not too much, so we wont need to thin out the fruitlets.

Another favourite Daff, and it's perfumed.

I don't know where the time goes, it seems to fly by, it's hard to believe that we are nearly half way through the year, maybe gardening makes the time fly, everything does seem to revolve around what is ready for harvesting or what needs planting out.

All the hens and ducks are laying well, we now have a glut of eggs, well over what we need for our customers so we are freezing quite a lot of these eggs, beaten and then frozen they will be good for a year.

I have also made some lemon curd, I will do another batch in the next few days.
We have now just about come to the end of the winter veg,

Last of the parsnips, this years have already germinated.

we've had our last parsnip and have now used our last onion but the ones in the tunnel should be ready by the end of May. We still have carrots plenty of chard and the first of this years spinach will be ready in a few days, so not too big a hungry gap.
A few more photos of the Daffodils.

And a couple of photos of the garden.

Freesias.

Wild Violets.

Drying out.

I love this purple  Iris.

After a very wet winter at last the land is drying out, helped by strong sunshine,

it has been dry enough to get out the rotovator and take out the hard work of preparing the land for potato planting.

The ridger ( red bit) saves a lot of work.

We have a ridger attachment for the rotaovator, this removes the effort of digging out trenches for the potato's. The  earlies are now planted, we have chosen five different types this year, Charlotte,  Catriona, Lady Balfour, Sainte and Nicola, and unlike last year each row has been clearly marked! For the main crop we will be sowing Sarpo Axona instead of the Sarpo Mira, it will be interesting to see for ourselves how they compare to each other. One unwelcomed find under the ground cover were six new Zealand flat worms, these horrible creatures eat earth worms and there is no known cure other than finding them and destroying them, so far no others have been found and we still have masses of earth worms. We will set traps around the garden in the hope of capturing them before they do too much damage.
Things are growing a pace this year,

even the asparagus has sent up a couple of shoots, far too early, we are still getting frosts at night despite the high daytime temperatures.

The crocus are beautiful this year and have multiplied.

The garden is now full of colour,

daffodils are doing particularly well,

they started very early and it looks as though they will continue for a good while yet,

a lots of them are perfumed which has attracted the  small Tortoiseshell butterflies,

they also love the Hyacinths.

Primroses are in bloom everywhere, soon the bluebells will be out, they are already in leaf, quite early for bluebells.

Less than 65cents a pot.

Last week a local supermarket had limes on special offer, 29cents for three, as we both love lime marmalade I couldn't pass on such a bargain. Lime marmalade is very expensive to buy, not that we would buy it, too many additives, I bought five bags of limes, plus organic lemons, 1800grams of sugar, total cost four euros sixty five cents, in total it made seven large jars plus a sample jar, less than 65cents a jar, it has set rather too well, I like marmalade with a little bit of run, but it tastes lovely.

Yummy malt loaf.

I have also come across an excellent recipe for malt loaf, something that you seldom see or even hear of nowadays, the recipe makes two loaves, presumably recognising  that the loaf improves with keeping but that most people will have to try it before it has reached it's maturity. I must admit, the first loaf  eaten in the first three days was very good, the second loaf having been kept for a few days was much better!

Incense burner to be glazed id black gold.

I have been doing a pottery course for the last six weeks,

This piece will be glazed in turquoise.

it has been very enjoyable and I think I have learnt a lot from our excellent teacher, however three hours once a week is rather too short to get all the pieces finished so the course has been extended,

Waiting to be decorated.

all the pieces have had their first firing,

Waiting for the under glaze painting to be done before the final firing.

but the painting and glazing still remains to be done, hopefully all of the classes peices will be finished this coming week so we can start with new projects after Easter.